Health insurance plans are being snatched up with the deadline looming

Health Insurance exchange marketplaces

The end of the 2014 open enrollment period for the health care reform is only just over a week away.

The Obama administration announced earlier this week that over 5 million people have now enrolled for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, which suggests that the number of people signing up has picked up speed as the deadline for this year rapidly approaches.

In the first half of this month, alone, an estimated 800,000 people signed up for coverage on the exchanges.

Health Insurance exchange marketplacesOfficials released a blog post that provide that health insurance enrollment figure and also pointed out that the state and federal marketplaces are rapidly picking up speed in terms of their sign-ups, as the number of people who enrolled in the first half of this month nearly reached the same figure as the number of people who enrolled in all of February. This shows that the health care reform compliance is picking up some serious momentum now that the deadline is closing in.

This new data is bringing the number of health insurance plan enrollments far closer to projections.

The predictions from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) were that there would be 6 million people enrolled by the close of this month. With the number of Americans purchasing their coverage under the health care reform growing much larger now that time is running out, it looks like the CBO will have either been accurate or quite close to the mark.

Officials are not surprised that there has been a rise in the rate of enrollment, this month. They had been predicting it, as March 31 is the last day for Americans to purchase their coverage using the exchanges in order to avoid paying a fine. The health care reform law requires that most people have medical coverage or they will be required to pay a fine of either $95 or 1 percent of their annual income for 2014, whichever is the greater amount.

The data that was released by the officials included only the number of people who had enrolled for their health insurance plans but did not reveal how many had signed up and who had actually paid their first premiums.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.